🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec21.232946.20701@yang.earlham.edu>, johnl@yang.earlham.edu (John Fiskio-Lasseter) writes:
>I'm wondering if anyone has ever run into this problem before, and if so, 
>has anyone ever found a solution:  In the last three weeks, three PC's -- 
>a pair of 486SX machines and a 286 -- have come into our repair shop with 
>an identical problem.  The 3.5"/1.44 meg drive will not read high-density 
>disks.  It reads 720K disks without a problem.  It reads 1.44M disks, but 
>only when they are write-protected.  If not, the drive will crap out 
>("GENERAL FAILURE READING DRIVE A:", etc.), and the FAT and BOOT sectors 
>of the disk are destroyed (interestingly, ViruSafe reports that the disks 
>are infected with Michelangelo, although they are most certainly not).
>
>What seems to be happening is that every time the drive attempts to access 
>a 1.44M disk, it first performs a write operation somewhere in FAT and 
>BOOT area, rendering the disk unreadable.  When the disk is 
>write-protected, the write operation fails and things carry on as usual, 
>except that a floppy isn't much good if you can't write to it.
>
>I am convinced this is a motherboard problem.  I've switched out the 
>drive, the cable, the controller, the hard drive, the CPU, and the 
>RAM.  The power supply connections all tested OK.  Nothing works, and 
>what's more, *ALL* of these parts work fine in another motherboard 
>(including the drive).  I've even tried replacing the oscillator on one 
>of the boards: nada.  Anyone got any suggestions?
>
>Thanks,
>-- John
>+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
>|John Howard Eli Fiskio-Lasseter  |     "Is obair-la\ to\iseachadh"   |
>|e-mail: johnl@yang.earlham.edu   |    ("Beginning is a day's work")  |
>|        JOHNL@EARLHAM.BITNET     |                --Gaidhlig Proverb |
>+---------------------------------------------------------------------+





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